


don't want no other shade of blue (but you)

by backfire



Series: your wonder (under summer skies) [2]
Category: The Society (TV 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, winter fic but make it summer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:42:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26148880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/backfire/pseuds/backfire
Summary: Yeah, Harry sort of fell for her in the summer, associates her with the smell of sunscreen and saltwater, hot sand and tanned skin and bright colors, but this—the blue of the winter night against her skin, the chill of the air flushing her cheeks pink, her hair being the brightest thing around.He likes her like this, too.
Relationships: Harry Bingham/Allie Pressman
Series: your wonder (under summer skies) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1898875
Comments: 17
Kudos: 70





	don't want no other shade of blue (but you)

**Author's Note:**

> here's a nice little sequel to my summer au/ice cream parlor au where the two of them are beach town locals
> 
> it goes without saying that i'm beyond devastated by the show's cancellation. i wrote this some time ago and was saving it, but i think now is a good time to post because this fic is 9k words of harry talking about the color blue and also how much he likes allie. it is pure fluff. i am not sorry. re-reading it made me feel a little better and i hope it makes you feel better too.
> 
> (thank you to [still_i_fall](https://archiveofourown.org/users/still_i_fall/pseuds/still_i_fall) for helping pick titles with me, i was in a bigtime struggle because apparently my entire personality is now folklore and fine line.)

It’s fucking freezing outside and the owners who actually live in the house Allie’s studio is attached to probably think Harry’s a creep for just sitting on their porch at night like this. 

He and Allie were supposed to grab dinner. Allie hadn’t told him until the last minute that she wouldn’t be able to make it but said that he could meet her at hers afterwards if he wanted. And obviously he wants. But he doesn’t have a key to her place or anything, because she’s literally not allowed to make any copies per her lease. And he knows she’s going to be exhausted when she gets home, but he really, really wants to see her. So he’s waiting for her in the wicker chair on the front porch, sitting on his hands and watching his breath waft in front of his face underneath the single incandescent light hanging from the sconce by the front door. 

He should have driven here. He didn’t think it through; they live so close that they usually just walk to each other’s places. He considers running back across the bridge and over to his building’s garage to retrieve his car and then driving it back here, but it would be so fucking extra. Or he could go back to his place and text her to come straight there instead. She’s got shit there for overnight stays. But then she might be too tired and say no, and...God, he really wants to see her. There’s no particular reason—he hasn’t had a bad day or anything, he just...wants to see her. Misses her.

The last time they saw each other was over the weekend, and today’s only Wednesday, but. He thinks it’s normal to miss your girlfriend like this, even if it’s just a few days. That’s what it’s all about, right?

Finally, he recognizes Allie’s car pulling into the tiny, single-direction street, stands from the wicker chair to lean against one of the pillars on either side of the two steps leading up to the porch, huddling in his coat. Smiles when he sees her scurry out of her car that’s parallel parked against the curb in front of the house, a knitted hat with a huge pom-pom jammed on top of her head, over her ears. She’s crazy about keeping her ears warm in the winter, always has some kind of headwear on when she’s leaving for the day or coming home.

“Hi,” she says breathlessly, hopping up onto the second porch step to curl her fingers into the lapels of his coat. “Sorry I stood you up for dinner.”

“It’s okay.” The tip of her nose is already going pink from being outside for just two seconds. It’s incredibly endearing. “Don’t care about dinner. I just wanted to see you.”

She smiles at him, pulls him in for a kiss underneath the porch awning. He presses in, because her face is still warm from being inside the car, and she huffs against him, then pushes him away. “Your face is all cold,” she complains. “Let’s go inside.”

She leads him by the hand—hers warm, his freezing—off the porch, around the side gate of the house into the separate unit in the back that’s home to her little shoebox of a place. It’s a pretty standard thing here, for these enclaves of summer homes to have completely independent units within them that people lease out at discounted rates for the winter. Then the homeowners jack them up as summer rentals for the people who come to spend the season. Allie has managed to snag one of the few yearly leases that exist, and at a decent price, too, but it always strikes Harry just how _small_ her place is. Just a rectangle, really, with the kitchen on one side and everything else on the other, bed and all. Like, obviously that’s how studios work, but he feels like he wouldn’t know what to do with himself in a space like this all the time.

He guesses it doesn’t matter much for Allie anyway; she’s hardly ever home, between her insane schedule of coursework and being her professor’s assistant and seeing him. He likes that last part the most, but he also likes seeing how committed she is to her work. It’s a flip from her summer self, all about beach time all the time, but he got to witness the transition for himself as the days grew shorter and colder, and he’d liked what he’d seen. She’s serious and capable and _smart_ , and he likes her so much.

“So like, I was finishing up with some of the clinical studies,” she’s telling him as she unzips her coat to hang up and swoops her knitted hat off her head. “And then Dr. March mentioned as she was leaving something about grading the term papers for the babies tomorrow.” ‘Babies’ is what she calls her undergrads, which Harry thinks is stupidly cute. “And I realized I completely fucking forgot to look them over for first edits last week when I was supposed to. So I had to stay behind and do that. And I still have studying to do for my own shit tonight.”

It’s undeniably her busiest time. Finals season for both her and the babies, on top of her extra workload helping her professor with clinical research. For the past two weeks, she’s been nonstop hauling ass to get everything finished. Even now, Harry can tell how tired she is, though she acts like she has this boundless energy when it comes to this. It’s the way she’d kicked her shoes off without bothering to place them in a neat pair next to the door like she usually does, the way she’s going about her tiny kitchen to make a cup of tea right now, even at this time of night, the way she hasn’t noticed a lock of hair has been sticking out of her head at a weird angle for the past five minutes from when she’d taken her hat off. 

He presses his lips together to keep from laughing, leans against the kitchen island to reach over and smooth down the hair around the crown of her head, letting the stray lock fall back in place among her curls before she can notice and be embarrassed. It kind of reminds him of her hair from the first night they really talked, their first (or second?) meeting in the parlor. He’ll never forget how messy her hair was, pulled up into that ponytail, a million curls sticking every which way and smelling of saltwater and sunscreen. Looking at him like she thought he was the world’s biggest ass. Which is legit what she _had_ been thinking, but. He was charmed nonetheless. 

“You’ll get through it,” he assures her, because he really believes that she will. She pauses from pouring water from the electric kettle into her mug, raises an eyebrow at him.

“You know,” she says, “it’s kind of your fault I never got around to those papers.”

Harry pauses, literally stops in his tracks. He’d been about to put his hands around her waist from behind her at the kitchen counter, which is exactly what he’d done last week on the one night he spent here. She originally was going to kick him out of her apartment because she had so much work to do, but then let him stay once he promised he wouldn’t distract her. And then when she took a break to get a drink, he followed her across the room, pressed up behind her and slid his hands over her waist, under her sweatshirt, started trailing these tiny kisses on the nape of her neck. She tried to bat him away at first, but he persisted, until she turned around and sat up on the counter, let him fit himself between her knees, let him distract her enough that she forgot all about her work, for the rest of the whole night. Until tonight, apparently.

“Sorry,” he says sheepishly; normally, he’d be a smug asshole about it, but he can tell she really is tired, and that’s at least partially his fault.

She doesn’t look up from her mug of tea when she says, casually, “It’s okay. I liked it.” He lets out a breathy laugh and his eyes drop down her body, making no attempt to hide where his mind goes. She catches him from the corner of her eye and sips her tea. “Don’t take that as permission for a repeat, though.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he says, even though he’s dreaming exactly of that, and she can tell. “Two more weeks, right?”

“Two weeks,” she confirms, patting him on the cheek fondly. And then she turns, pulls her hair into a ponytail like she often does when she gets to work, and starts getting out her books and papers.

Two weeks until she has her first, and possibly only, break of the year. A whole month and a half between semesters where she’s not doing anything; no classes to TA, no research to complete, because her professor is also going on vacation with her wife or something, no clinics to shadow. Just a pure break, before things get exponentially busier in the spring. It’s the main thing they’ve both been banking on, because ever since they got together at the end of summer, it’s like they haven’t been able to recapture that same, carefree quality that came with those long days where the main thing they had to deal with was keeping the ice cream parlor running. 

Don’t get him wrong, Harry wouldn’t trade the past couple months of dating her for anything (he likes her _so_ much, has he said that already?) but he’s also looking forward to monopolizing her time a little. More than he already does.

  


**

  


He doesn’t see her for a full week and a half during her finals. She spends all her free time either at the school library or studying with Bean, the girl in Jason’s band who turned out to be in the same program as Allie; they’ve become friends over the semester, and now Harry and Allie are basically obligated to go to every show that The Guard play at the bars around town. He doesn’t mind; he kind of likes the atmosphere, also likes when Allie spends the whole night talking in his ear.

She’s also been tasked with proctoring some of the undergrad finals, and he knows Allie has nothing but respect and admiration for Dr. March, but Harry personally thinks the woman puts too much on Allie’s plate at times. 

“It’s because she trusts me to do a good job,” Allie told him when he brought it up once, and he could tell she was proud of herself, so he didn’t want to push the topic. He just thinks the work life balance that Allie gets cut is a tad severe.

Throughout the week, he’s been trying not to bug her too much; one, because he doesn’t want to be clingy or whatever, two, because she really is busy and this is important to her and he doesn’t want his presence being a detriment to her work. When they’re physically around each other he can’t help but want to take up her attention. They’re both very aware of this.

The night she finally finishes though, she comes straight to his apartment and Harry’s so relieved to see her, like she’s been gone for fucking years or something, when he opens the door. He wants nothing more than to sweep her into his arms and like, spin her around his kitchen, then get her in his bed, but she looks mentally drained from her killer week, so he lets her be when she shuffles in, wraps her arms around his middle, and presses her cheek against his chest. Settles for smoothing his hand over her hair. It’s soft this time of year, not crunchy and stiff from ocean water. He likes it both ways.

“I cannot wait to just do absolutely nothing,” she says against the fabric of his t-shirt, and he hums. He can’t wait to do nothing with her.

She’s beat and he knows this, so he lets her settle into his couch, gets her a beer as she turns on Netflix to watch some home improvement show because it’s easy and she won’t have to think. She falls asleep after thirty minutes or so, with her shoulder pressed up against his and her head lolling onto the back of the couch, untouched beer bottle held loosely in her hands and in danger of spilling at any moment. He gingerly picks it up and leaves it to sweat on the coffee table before gently rousing her and pushing her to bed.

In the morning, however, she gets him awake rather abruptly by slapping a hand against his cheek and saying, firmly, “Wake up.” Harry’s eyes are all bleary and sleep crusted when he cracks them open, and it’s still half-dark in the room, everything gray and blue to match with the winter outside. She slaps him a second time when he closes his eyes again and he groans. Then she presses herself against him, and okay, he can feel that she’s completely naked, and suddenly he’s way more alert.

“Harry. Wake up,” she says again. “I want you.”

Yeah, that’s enough to get him awake. He sits up a little, peels back the covers to look at her, then she gets on top of him. His voice is rough when he says, “I missed you,” against the skin of her throat, and she threads her hands through his hair and sighs.

“Me too.”

They don’t leave the bed until it’s almost afternoon—only then because Allie wants to shower and is hungry, so he makes lunch while she does that and then after, they honestly get back in bed for basically the rest of the day.

If this is what she’d meant by doing nothing, Harry’s on board.

  


**

  


She wants to go to the beach at night, which he thinks is crazy because it’s the end of December, and yeah, it usually never snows anything significant this close to the shoreline, but there’s slush everywhere just a couple miles inland.

“You hate the cold,” Harry reminds her, mostly because he wants to stay in with her a little more.

“I do,” she says, already pulling on her ankle boots, “but I also miss the water. I just want to look at it. Just so I know it’s still there, you know?”

Obviously it’s still there; their beach town is still a beach town, even in the winter. People just don’t go that way this time of year, other than to visit the restaurants and bars on the boardwalk. Even then, it’s just the locals or the people who live close enough to drive down and have a nice evening at the places that are normally bursting over the summer. No one really goes onto the sand, especially at night.

He’s not going to deny Allie this, though. He knows she’s got this weird obsession with the ocean, even though it’s died down with the seasons. She was still going to the beach in September, continued all the way into October, on any days that were sunny. Not to swim, but just to sit and look at the waves. She started bringing him along at some point, a bottle of wine in the sand between them in the evenings, until the days grew too short and the temperature too cold to reasonably keep going.

She pulls her pom-pom hat over her head when they exit his apartment building and walk over, her hands in mittens but her arm linked with his.

Their feet sink into the damp sand when they get there, the boardwalk lights dim in the background, everything else quiet. They’re alone, of course. Allie has to hold her hat to her head to keep it from flying off in the winter wind coming from the sea. The water still sounds the same as it does in the summer, rushing in and being drawn out with the tides, only everything around them is crisp and dark and navy. She breathes deep, trying to inhale the saltwater scent, but it’s too cold for it to carry, and she sighs, disappointed.

“This was a bust,” she says. “I always try this and it never works. It’s just not the same. And I’m freezing.”

“Let’s stop at the gelato place on the way back,” Harry suggests. “Get some of that fancy ginger hot cocoa they have. And then we can light my fireplace, simulate some kind of cabin experience.”

“That sounds amazing,” Allie says, leaning into his side, still looking out at the black waves.

He kisses the crown of her head, next to her pom-pom, and thinks that this wasn’t all a bust. Yeah, Harry sort of fell for her in the summer, associates her with the smell of sunscreen and saltwater, hot sand and tanned skin and bright colors, but this—the blue of the winter night against her skin, the chill of the air flushing her cheeks pink, her hair being the brightest thing around.

He likes her like this, too.

  


**

  


They didn’t exactly talk about or plan to spend the holidays with each other, but that’s how it turns out.

Harry’s mom and her new boyfriend have gone off to Croatia or something together and his sister opted to stay at school for break. Allie’s parents have gone to visit her sister in Chicago; Allie was originally supposed to go with them, but then got too caught up with work and waited too long to book a flight out until they were all either taken up or too pricey to be reasonable.

“We’re not really a Christmassy family anyway,” Allie tells him, not seeming too concerned about it. They’re in her apartment, trying to make mulled wine. She’s tending to a simmering pot of cinnamon, orange slices, and anise. “It’s always kind of whatever.”

“Yeah, us too,” he says. No one in his family buys into the whole spirit of the holiday. He can’t remember the last time they did the whole ‘gather around the tree and open presents together’ thing. He’s also secretly glad he’ll get to have more of Allie, this way. If it gets him more of this—her wearing one of his sweaters and panties and nothing else, her entire tiny studio smelling like warm spices, her holding up a wooden spoon for him to try the hot wine before snatching it away at the last second—then he’d gladly trade any family obligations.

The morning of, she whispers “Merry Christmas” into his neck, and they laze together in bed, chatting and fooling around and watching the weak winter sun slide in through the skylight that he has in his bedroom’s vaulted ceilings. He lives on the top floor of one of the buildings his family owns halfway between downtown and the boardwalk, and Allie had made fun of him for it at first, also for his family being the reason that snobs are moving into town left and right. But he thinks she’s come around to like it here. They spend an almost even amount of time between their two places, but he sees her admiring the space, the dedicated separation between living and dining and sleeping. And she definitely appreciates the skylights, which she says make it feel less like winter because of how much light they bring, unlike how dark it can get in her one-window studio.

Over breakfast, which is really more like lunch after all the time they spent languishing, she pushes a box over to him across the counter and says, “Merry Christmas again.” 

It’s a pair of new sunglasses that match the pair she wore all the time in the summer, because he’s the type to wear them year round, especially when he’s driving. He kept complaining to her about either leaving his pair in his apartment or in one car instead of the other, and she rolled her eyes so hard and told him never to say that kind of shit in front of Becca or Sam, or they’d tear him apart. 

“Now you have one pair for each car,” she tells him when he takes them out of the box and tries them on, everything in his apartment going tinted and dark. He doesn’t dare mention the Porsche he has sitting unused at his family’s main house, the one he’s planning to give to his sister when she graduates.

As far as gifts go, it’s a pretty great one because it’s thoughtful and sweet, and she’s biting her lip as he tries them on like she hopes he likes them, but like, how could he not? They’re from her. Plus he looks good in anything, so that part’s a non-issue. Not that he’s going to say that.

"I'll never take them off," he says, doing a sweeping _voila_ gesture. She holds up an imaginary camera and pretends to take a picture of him from across the counter, then edges her way around the corner of the island over to him.

"You're a real stunner," she tells him in a mock serious voice. "How will I fend off all the girls once it's actually hot outside, after you no longer look like a douchebag for wearing sunglasses in the winter?" He laughs, then she reaches up and slides the sunglasses off his face for him, setting them down on the countertop carefully before kissing him.

He likes the implication that they'll still be together once it's summer again. And yeah, they've only been dating for like four months now, but it doesn't feel like something that's going to fade with the seasons. Something unfolds in his chest when he considers she might feel the same way.

He was going to wait until after dinner to give Allie her gift, because he's _nervous_ , which is not really a thing for him, but when she pulls back she's looking at him all expectantly, and he can tell she doesn't want to have to actually ask where her present is. He wets his lips, thinking if he should walk it back, find something else to give her.

Harry kind of went all out, didn't really know what exactly he was thinking, because again, they've only been together four months, but it feels longer than that. All he knows is that he saw her painting her nails sunshine yellow the other week, and she complains all the time about the dark and the cold and how short the days are, and whenever they go outside she looks wistfully towards the beach, where the waves are frigid and unwelcoming, and... He thought she might want to get away somewhere warm, just for a bit. With him.

"Okay," he says, stepping back and pulling out his phone. "Okay, first let me preface and say, it's totally cool if you don't want to."

"Oh, boy."

“And that I know I’m probably doing too much, and you can make fun of me for it, but that I seriously think you deserve something like this.”

“Oh, boy…?” She sounds less exasperated now, like she’s anticipating what it could possibly be. 

He pulls up his flight app to show her—two tickets to Saint Thomas, for five nights. Leaving the day after New Year's. Her jaw drops open and she takes the phone from him, scrolling through the digital boarding pass. He doesn't realize he's holding his breath until she looks up at him with bare wonder and excitement in her eyes, and he lets it out, relieved that the reaction seems to be good.

"We're going to the Virgin Islands?"

"You seemed like you were missing some nice weather," he says, trying to play it cool. "And you said you wanted to do nothing, so...why not do nothing on the beach? Plus all our families are kind of away somewhere, so I thought why shouldn't we get away somewhere too? Plus it’s only a four hour flight." He's rambling, he knows, and she steps forward, sliding her hands around his middle and resting her chin on his chest. He stops talking and looks down at her, wondering if it's normal to like a person this much.

"Harry," she says, her eyes genuine, "I can't believe you're trying to give me _summer_ as a Christmas present."

He lets out this single laugh through his nose, brushes some hair away from her forehead. "Do you like it?"

She says, "What do you think?" and then leans up to kiss him again.

  


**

  


In the weird in-between that happens after Christmas and before New Years, Harry ends up going back to work for a few days. Since his mother's gone, there are a few acquisitions that need taking care of, as well as some city zoning plans to go over to make sure the new construction happening on the far side of the strip are up to code.

Allie tags along to the office in the middle of the downtown plaza, where everyone else has been sent home for the holidays. She seems surprised to see that he actually _does_ work.

"What did you think I do all day when you're at school?"

She shrugs a shoulder. "Wait for me to get back? I don't know. I guess the only part of your job I ever saw was the stuff that had to do with the parlor."

He shakes his head and chuckles, and then she perches herself with her legs crossed on the edge of his desk that sits in the middle of his huge corner office, with mirrored floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the downtown corridor, empty at this time of year.

Then she says, "I have to admit, it's kinda hot, seeing you like this." Before, while she poked around his office at his bookshelf and diplomas and things, he was concentrating on one of his monitors, trying to make sense of some of the financial projections for the latest Bingham development. "Is this how you feel when you see me studying? Why you wanna distract me all the time?" He puts his hand on her knee, thumb brushing back and forth against the fabric of her jeans.

"Baby, you have no idea."

He only ever calls her that when he's trying to get things to go somewhere, or when things have already gone there, and she bats her lashes at him innocently before uncrossing her legs and adjusting her posture so they're spread a little more open on the desk, leans down to get herself closer to him, which also gives him a view down her shirt. Jesus. "Maybe it's my turn. I get to distract you now. As payback."

None of the stuff he has to get done is time-sensitive, but he doesn't tell her that. Instead, he slides his hand a little further down the side seam of her jeans, until he gets it wrapped around behind her knee and tugs her forward on the desk. She gets what he's trying to do, rises and then settles onto his lap in his office chair, pressing herself down on him while he flexes his fingers at her hip and wishes they weren't both wearing so many damn layers. That can be fixed, though, and Harry's glad that the windows in the entire building are mirrored, and that they're the only ones here.

Later, Allie leaves to pick up dinner to bring back to the office from the specialty sandwich place in town that they both love. In the meantime, Harry digs into some of the applications they've gotten for open rentals. He's not the one who sorts through individual people trying to move into apartment or condo units, but he does have to look through any applications that come through for commercial spaces, and there's one in particular that catches his eye, for a small restaurant space they have a few blocks in from the boardwalk strip near 1st Ave, nearly on the opposite side of the bend where Boardwalk Ice Cream lives.

"Here, look at this," he says to Allie when she gets back, two brown takeout boxes in her hands, as well as two beers from the office kitchen. She sets the things down on his desk and gets behind his monitor, and he pulls up the application for the listing, using his mouse to highlight the applicant name. "Bill Lennox."

"Bill Lennox, like, as in Mr. and Mrs. Lennox from Shell Cafe?"

"Yeah." Allie rests a hand on his shoulder, squeezes, and beams down at him.

"Oh my God. Shell Cafe's coming back. And they're moving to the whole other side of the boardwalk?"

"I mean, if we decide to rent them the space, yeah," Harry says, and then he laughs and says _"Ow!"_ when she smacks him upside the head. "Come on. Obviously they're getting it, it was a joke."

"They lost everything in that fire," Allie reminds him. "You know, they probably only got enough seed money for this because of our fundraiser."

"And their insurance payout," Harry adds, but she pretends not to hear him.

"We should do something for them," she says, "to let them know we haven't forgotten about them, you know?"

"Well, they're probably not going to open for months, with all the prep and renovating the space and all."

Allie looks at him and shakes her head; as if she's going to let that stop her.

  


**

  


Allie recruits Elle, who recruits Helena, and they all bug Harry into letting them into the unit to see what can be done. He processed the Lennox's application yesterday and told them they could meet to finalize everything once his mom got back from her trip, but that the space was theirs for all intents and purposes.

It's a first floor corner unit on the intersection of Ocean and 1st Ave, two blocks in from the boardwalk, definitely in a trendier area than the classic little ocean-facing complex where Shell Cafe used to belong. They gutted the entire place when they bought the building, put in all new fixtures and appliance hookups and everything, so right now it's all just open space, except for the service counter and the door that leads into the back area that is, for the most part, the same as it was from the previous cafe that used to occupy the place years ago, before the Binghams owned the building.

"It's looking a little bare," Helena says as they survey the unit. "We could paint the walls?"

Allie, Elle, and Helena all look between each other and Harry automatically knows that's what they're going to do. He agrees though, the place could use it; the walls right now are completely bare, not even a first coat on them, just plaster and drywall, streaked white and beige. 

Harry drives them all over to Home Depot and they spend the rest of the day picking out the perfect shade, as well as getting rollers, painter's tape, plastic sheeting, trays, primer, and everything else on the quick supplies list that Allie pulls up from her Google search on "how to paint walls."

They go with a mellow robin's egg blue, similar to the shade that Shell Cafe used to be except a little more toned down, perfectly beachy and pleasant. Elle really has an eye for it, she's the one who makes the executive decision from the swatch booklet that the employee gives them.

They spend the whole next day painting the entire front section, which luckily isn't that much area to cover since at least one wall is mostly taken up by the massive windows that stretch from the floor to the ceiling. But they move a ladder inside, dress in ratty old sweatshirts, and play music. Allie dances with Elle and threatens to splatter Harry with paint when she catches him watching her instead of working. She has her hair tied up in a ponytail and has splotches of blue dotted all over her gray Old Navy sweatshirt, as well as a streak of it across her cheek that he declines to point out to her, only because finds insanely it cute when she looks at him all serious and shakes her paint roller in mock threat.

"Don't think you can't do your fair share just because you own the place, Bingham," she says, and Helena laughs.

"She's always talking back to you like that, huh?" Helena says. "Even back at the parlor, it was always like this."

"I let it slide only because she's cute," Harry says, and Allie shakes her ponytail out like she's preening, gets another paint streak onto her face when she wipes her forehead.

The place doesn't have heat turned on yet, so they have an electric space heater set in the center of the room. Harry gets them pizza from The Chapel for lunch, and they sit around the heater eating while they take an afternoon break. Eventually, though, they get so sweaty from working that Allie sheds her sweatshirt and works in the tank top she'd been wearing underneath, and ends up getting paint all over her upper arms and shoulders, too.

When they finally finish, the place definitely looks warmer, more inviting, more complete. More like the essence of Shell Cafe, or what will become the new Shell Cafe eventually. Allie throws her hands up and out, sighing long and loud while Helena and Elle take pictures of their work. Harry's busy looking at Allie, thinking about how she's practically made for the color blue—any shade of it, any time of year. Her in the vibrant summer sea, or on the warm sand against a cloudless sky; her in the dead of winter, the night around them a blue so dark it's edging on black; her in front of this wall, basking in the rewards of a day of hard work well spent.

"Ugh," Helena says, snapping him out of his reverie. "You have to stop staring at her like that."

He smirks. "You mean the exact same way you were staring at Elle?"

Helena's mouth snaps shut, because yes, Harry _had_ seen her move her phone camera away from the walls and over to Elle, focusing instead on taking photos of her girlfriend instead of the paint, a look of soft wonder and admiration on her face.

"You know," Allie says, slipping her sweatshirt back on over her head. Her hair only gets even messier when she does, a million little flyaways haloed around her face. "Looking at this wall..." She gets a faraway look in her eye that Harry knows to mean she's thinking about summer, about the ocean. "I could really go for a cherry dip cone right now."

That's how they end up piling into the car to drive the two minutes it takes to get to Boardwalk Ice Cream, which is technically closed for the holidays, as is customary since hardly anyone comes this time of year to get ice cream anyway. It's freezing in the back room, but they've all had a couple beers after wrapping up painting, and they're just buzzed enough to brace it.

They lean against the service counter with their soft serve, and Harry's paying less attention to his swirl cone than he is to Allie eating her ice cream, and God, this reminds him so much of that night over the summer, when he stumbled upon her. Her hair's just as messy, only now her face is streaked with blue paint that still no one has told her about, and she's bundled in a thick coat and a sweatshirt underneath, no more dripping ponytail ends and exposed bikini strings. And she's also looking at him with warmth in her eyes as she bites into her cone, not cold and hostile and offended like she was that time. As hot of a look that was on her, Harry much prefers this.

"This is just like old times, you guys," Elle says, reading the mood of the room. The four of them back here again, in the dead of the winter, eating ice cream that they haven't paid for after a long day. "I miss the summer."

"Join the frickin club," Allie says, chuckling. And sure, no one else here is as crazy about it as she is, but there's no such a thing as a "winter person" living in this town. They're all summer people here.

"Yeah, except now we're all done being idiots about each other, I hope," Helena says, gesturing between them, all of them coupled off between the four.

"Harry's still an idiot," Allie says, crunching into her sugar cone. "I've learned to live with it."

"Okay, Smurfette," he says, holding up his phone to the front-facing camera so Allie can finally see herself covered in blue paint. Her jaw drops open, and he's surprised he doesn't get the remainder of her ice cream cone thrown at his head.

  


**

  


For New Year's, they go to Ocean's Tavern with Sam and Becca and get completely wasted.

The only time Harry's ever seen Allie like this before had been last year, their very first encounter, when she hooked him in with a single gaze. He's gleaned by now that this isn't a regular thing for her, and she chooses only very occasionally to go all out when the situation calls for it. New Year's, apparently, is one of those situations.

She'd given him plenty of fair warning, though, as they were getting ready to leave from her apartment. She pulled on this really low-cut black halter top that scoops down all the way to her lower back on the other side, spent forever getting her hair pin straight, has on red lipstick and shimmery highlighter. He's never seen her like this before, and he'd be the a huge fucking liar if he said it wasn't sexy as hell. Like, yeah, they both know that this isn't really the embodiment of _her_ and isn't supposed to be, but Harry has eyes, okay. 

"I'm doing it all tonight," she'd said as she put on these little dangly star earrings. "Like, all. College Allie. Last hurrah before we leave tomorrow."

"Okay," he'd chuckled, noting that it's a good thing their flight leaves at night.

Harry finds out while they're there that Allie's going "all out" is to make up for blowing off Sam up for Christmas. With her immediate family gone, she was supposed to have spent it at her aunt and uncle's with him; he desperately wanted her company there to save him from having to spend time with his brother, who apparently is The Worst, according to every single person every time the guy’s come up in conversation. Allie'd chosen instead to spend it with _him_ —Sam says the word like he's an accusation, a finger to his chest, when he fills Harry in while they get refills at the bar. Allie's dancing with Becca, and Harry has a hard time keeping his eyes off of her.

"She didn't even tell me," Harry says, feeling not very guilty at all. They had a great Christmas. "What about Grizz? He couldn't come be a buffer?"

"He's on a family ski trip," Sam explains. "Which is also why I'm here tonight with you losers instead. The least Allie could do is get lit for the occasion."

"Aw, thanks, man," Harry says, patting a hand on Sam's shoulder. Their shots get set down on the bar then, and he picks both his and Allie's up to bring over to her. She gives him the most delighted look when he does, and he'd forgotten that she has this side to her, too. A reformed party girl, or something, who still gets back in the swing when she wants to. And she's in the swing now, knocks back the shot and then takes Harry's from his hands and knocks that one back too. He laughs incredulously as she puckers her lips, then he's following her as she winds her arms around his neck and moves with him to the music.

Kelly shows up at some point, and Becca leaves to go be with her, but Harry's too distracted with Allie, looking shimmery and hot as fuck under the shitty club lights, moving against him. When it's nearing midnight, she leans up and says into his ear, "Let' go outside."

They're both drunk and giggly when they stumble out into the freezing air, into the small outdoor area the place has that's normally packed in the summer, but of course no one's here now, when the temperature is flirting on the line of freezing. Allie's still wearing just her halter top and matching black pants and white strappy heels. Some of the hold has let go on her straightened hair, a couple pieces framing her face starting to curl once again. God, Harry has a hard time comprehending how hot she is. How he gets to just be around her whenever he wants, get his hands on her like this—he puts them around her waist, then around to her bare back, draws her in so she doesn't have to be as cold. Girls are fucking crazy for doing this sort of thing, coming out around the holidays wearing so little for the sake of hotness.

He doesn't bother telling Allie it's unnecessary, that she could be wearing a cardboard box and he'd still find her to be the hottest person in the room. There's no point, because she's getting all dressed up for herself, not for him. She's not the type who would do it for him, or any guy.

"It was too loud in there," she says, huddling into him. Her cheeks are rosy from the drinks, and her nose and ears are starting to go red from the cold. His ears feel like they're about to fall off, too, but it's compensated by the weight of her shoulder and head as they press into his chest, under his chin. "Too many people."

"I thought that's what you wanted. Isn't that the point of this sort of thing?"

"Yeah," Allie concedes, swaying on her feet slightly, nestling a little more securely into him to keep balance. "But it's almost midnight. I wanted to be with just you for this part."

Despite the outside temperature, something warm blooms in his chest, and when the clock strikes midnight, her kiss is sweet against his lips, her fingertips pressing almost chastely against his numb face.

  


**

  


Allie finishes sleeping off her hangover the entire flight. Which is helpful since there isn’t a time difference between home and Saint Thomas, so when they land early in the morning, they’re both ready to spend the entire day with no time lost.

The very first thing she does when they check into their suite (she'd had a minor meltdown when Harry revealed to her that he booked them a suite at all instead of a regular standard room, and he decides not to tell her about the private villa his family usually gets) is kick off her shoes and socks and throw open the windows, soaking in the sun and the warmth and the breeze from their panoramic oceanfront view. The Caribbean water is a vibrant turquoise, lined with palm trees and white sand and the whole thing looks like some kind of postcard.

"Oh my _God_ , Harry," she sighs, going out onto the balcony and letting her arms dangle over the railing. "Look at all this."

He comes up behind her, gets his arm around one of her shoulders and tugs her into his side. It's hot here. He's already starting to sweat and her skin sticks to his. But he likes it; this feels right. "Just wait 'til you get in it."

She turns to look up at him and her eyes are fucking sparkling, and Harry knows that's the very next thing on their agenda, food and rest and all else be damned.

It's okay. It's worth it to see her emerge from the bathroom in her bathing suit, white bikini strings dangling down her back because she hasn't taken the time to tie them properly, just did them in knots in her haste, then to see her fucking _run_ into the ocean with no hesitation or mind to Harry whatsoever, while he tracks down a spot for them to set their things and prop up one of the hotel-provided umbrellas.

He wades in only after all their stuff is set down, laughs when he sees her bobbing out way further than anyone else in the water has gone. She starts swimming over when she turns around and spots him, comes up to meet him the same time a wave breaks and crashes around both their shoulders. It's shallow enough here to stand, and the water is so clear that he can see all the way down to the bottom, to the white sand ocean floor, their feet distorted and wavy under the surface.

Her hair is darkened with water against her shoulder, slicked back against her head when she surfaces in front of him. Droplets are clinging to her eyelashes, sliding down her cheeks, all over her skin. She looks like she belongs here.

"Harry," she says, smiling so bright and wide that he thinks he might never look away. "Have you ever _seen_ water this blue? This is incredible." She brings her arms around his neck and he automatically gets his around her back in the water, pressing them close. He doesn't dare voice aloud that the only blue he really cares about right now is the blue of her eyes, but he's thinking it.

"Thank you for this," she says, "for giving summer back to me." And then she kisses him, the two of them standing in the warm, impossibly blue sea, saltwater on her lips and in her hair, and he holds her a little more securely in her arms and thinks maybe he belongs here, too. Not necessarily _here_ , in the ocean, on this island—but with her.

  


**

  


They spend the night drinking too many daiquiris at the tiki bar by the pool. Allie dances among the strangers, wearing just a white slip over her still-damp bathing suit, while Harry watches, amused, until some guys try hitting on her because they think she's alone.

She thinks it's super fucking funny, them trying to flirt with her, and she actually flirts _back_ a little, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye while she does so, hoping to get a rise of out out of him. It only works when one of the guys tries putting his hands on her—not inappropriately, just at her elbow, but definitely signaling wanting more. Harry goes over and wraps his arm around her waist and tells them to kindly fuck off, all while she snickers in the crook of his elbow, giggly and tipsy.

"Remember when we tried to out-flirt each other on the fourth of July?" she says, swaying into his shoulder.

"That was different," Harry says, miffed, and he knows it's because they were basically flirting with each other via other people that time. And he _still_ managed to get jealous, with those random dudes who invited her to watch fireworks with them.

"Why don't we get outta here, if you're so concerned?" Allie says, and he thinks that's not a bad idea.

Later, when they're back in the hotel room, with the balcony door wide open to let the ocean breeze in, the moon in the sky hazy through the mosquito net surrounding the bed, she pulls him close and says, "Baby, you're hot when you're jealous. Even if it's unnecessary."

"I know it is. I can't help it." 

It's true, on both fronts. As much as he doesn't enjoy watching other guys try to make passes at his girlfriend, he doesn't actually feel _threatened_ , because this— _them_ —feels secure. Feels real.

Then she sits on his lap, him propped up against the headboard, and he curses when he can't untie her bikini strings since she has them all in double knots rather than normal loops that pull out.

"So impatient," she laughs, and he thinks that's incredibly ironic since the strings are all tied up like this because of her own impatience. Then she slips the top off over her head rather than untie it and falls against him and he stops thinking altogether about the concept of patience.

  


**

  


Harry books them a private Catamaran to take them out to the reefs and to a sandbar where they'll have a catered lunch complete with champagne and chocolate covered strawberries, but finds out too late that Allie thinks snorkeling is stupid.

"I'm not going to put a gross plastic breathing tube in my mouth just so I can look underwater," she scoffs, slipping on a pair of plain goggles instead. Even so, she dives down deep and silently points out to him all the coral formations and the colorful fish swimming by in schools, her hair floating in soft sheets all around her head like some kind of mermaid. They're out a few miles from the beach, completely alone except for the captain and the crew, and after the whole morning is spent, Allie's reluctant to get back on the boat to drive over to the sandbar for lunch. So Harry's going to count this as a win.

On the sandbar, she lays out after they eat to laze in the sun and wait the proper prescribed twenty minutes to get back in the water so she doesn't cramp up. Harry's wishing he brought a camera with him, but he left his phone back on the boat for safekeeping. She's wearing her red bikini, the same one she wore the day she kissed him in the middle of the beach before their first date, with the little bows on either side of her hips. She's gotten a slight tan from their few days here so far, and under the sun high in the sky, her hair drying in tousled waves against her blue beach towel, she looks so golden it hurts.

He knows he's staring. But he doesn't stop, revelling in the fact that he’s allowed to stare at all. That she even _likes_ it when he does, most of the time. There’s this tiny lift at the corner of her lips; she must like it right now. He reaches out to trace his fingertip against her collarbone, toying with the bows on the side of her bikini top that keep the whole thing together. She looks over at him, tilts her sunglasses down her nose—the ones matching the pair she gave him for Christmas that he's wearing now—and quirks an eyebrow like she knows exactly what he's thinking. They're completely alone out here.

She does know exactly what he’s thinking, because he doesn’t even have to say anything. Just blinks at her slowly, once.

"It's only because I don't want tan lines," she informs him haughtily as she unties her top and leaves it in the sand next to her. "Not so you can have your visual buffet."

"I'm eating anyway," he says, sipping his champagne flute and enjoying the view immensely. She flips so she’s lying on her front then, maybe to discourage him, but the joke's on her because the view of her bare back beneath the sun is just as good. He wants to lean over and trace his lips over her spine, imprint himself onto the sun freckles starting to scatter like stars over her shoulder blades, but he knows she doesn't like to be disturbed during her sun time. Even if it's him. She still has that lift at the corner of her lips, so that’s enough.

  


**

  


On the evening of their last full day before they have to leave in the morning, they're lounging on the beach in front of the hotel, and the sun's starting to go down. They went out on jet skis earlier, and he can still hear Allie's delighted laughter ringing in his ears as she raced him along the coast and tried to knock him over in her wake.

Her hair's still slightly damp, starting to dry into her signature beach waves against her back, and she has a pair of shorts on over her navy-and-white bathing suit bottoms with the matching top. She's sitting up, her elbows resting on her knees, gazing out at the sky beginning to turn pink over the brilliant turquoise water, looking wistful and nostalgic and sad about something Harry can't understand, because what could be more perfect than this?

He asks her, "Penny for your thoughts?"

She turns to him, tucks some of her wild hair behind her ears and gives him a small smile and sighs. "Nothing. This is perfect. I'm being stupid."

"You're not," he says automatically, because she could never be stupid. Even when she's being stupid. "I'm sensing a 'but' in there."

"But," she allows, tilting her head to the side slowly. "I miss the beach."

Harry laughs and gives her a funny look. "Allie, we're _on_ the beach."

"No," she shakes her head. "Like, I miss the beach at home. I miss _our_ beach. This is all so great, but it’s not the same.”

Something swells in Harry's chest, something great and crashing like a tidal wave just before it breaks into sea foam. Because the beach is such an exclusively _Allie_ thing—her home, part of her soul, part of the fabric of her being. But she said _our_. _Our beach._ Like he's included in that, too.

The wave in his chest hits peak, crests and breaks on the shore, spilling forth all over his body and mind and heart and the only thing he can find to say in response, as he looks at her in wonder, is…

"I love you."

It slips out like it's some kind of casual reply, not this huge, monumental thing that he's never really said to anyone outside his family before. Even in his family, it’s rare. She blinks over at him, the wistful air in her eye vanished and replaced with something that looks like awe, looks like satisfaction, looks like happiness.

"Obviously," she says, crawling over to him on the sand. "I mean, what else am I supposed to make of all this?" She gestures out to the view of the sunset over the sea, the two of them basking in the last of the warm daylight, the sand soft and white around them, like _this_ is the embodiment of love, or something. That must be how her mind works, at least—everything tied back to the ocean.

Then she tucks herself into his side, gets her wet hair across his bare skin, holds his hands in her own, brings them up to her lips to press kisses to his salty fingertips, and says the four words back. He thinks maybe she's right; what else are they supposed to make of all this?

  


**

  


As much as she'd talked about missing their home beach, Harry can tell she's torn up at having to leave.

"Don't even talk to me right now," she'd said sternly, her arms crossed, when he asked if she was ready to go home while in the car to the airport. She spends the rest of the drive staring out the window at the palm trees and the receding oceanfront, her arms wrapped around herself like she's already anticipating the cold that's waiting for them when they get back.

They have just shy of two more weeks together before her spring semester starts and she's back to being a busy bee. But it'll be better, he thinks, because she's done being a TA for spring and gets to focus on research instead, and there are only a few more months until the days get long and the weather gets warm and they'll get _their_ beach back again.

Harry thinks he has an idea of how he wants to spend those two weeks. It's stupid that she's still living in her tiny place. They live ten minutes away from each other, and he knows her lease is up next month. Part two of his Christmas gift, the one he was only going to give to her if their trip went well—and it had—is sitting in a box in his desk drawer, on a fancy new keyring.

Allie groans when they land and step back out into the crisp January air, huddling into herself and pulling her pom-pom hat back on over her head. But when Harry takes them the long way home, on the route that winds them along the coast, she sighs in contentment when she looks out the window to see the Atlantic, vast and gray and _theirs_ , even under the winter sun. "I guess it's good that I only have three months out of the year to lose my mind," she says. "Or else I'd never get anything done."

"Summer'll be here before you know it," he says, turning them into the road adjacent to the boardwalk strip, then towards his apartment building.

"I'll make do with you in the meantime." She reaches out to ruffle the hair sitting over his forehead, and he laughs and bats her hand away. "You're a year-round thing, anyway."

**Author's Note:**

> confession: i had this planned out before folklore came out but then folklore came out and i almost scrapped this entire thing for angst where they break up and harry’s hung up on them just being a summer thing. set to august…obviously. but i am glad i did not do that. no one needs that angst right now!
> 
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